Toronto - It's a parent's worst nightmare. Their child
doesn't come home one evening and is missing for several days.
When the mother of a 14-year-old boy from Atlanta, Georgia
disappeared earlier this year, she turned to her smartphone for clues using an
app called Family Tracker that helped track his location.
It is one of several apps that allow parents to track the
whereabouts of their children.
"You can see where your loved ones are without having
to call or bother them," said Roberto Franceschetti of LogSat, the
creators of the Family Tracker, which has more than 100 000 users and is
available worldwide.
Parents can track the location of their child on a map, send
messages and even activate an alarm on the phone remotely.
"We have an option for the sender to make a very nasty,
noisy sound.
"It's a loud siren and we repeat that sound every two
minutes until the person picks up," he said.
Parents don't need to own a smartphone to track their
children. The service is also accessible via the web, as long as the phone that
is being tracked is running the app, which runs on an iPhone or Android
devices.
Family Tracker has an additional service that keeps a log of
all data generated by the app for a two-week period, which the company calls
GPS breadcrumbs.
The service was used to find the missing boy in Atlanta.
"With a subscription, we keep all the locations where
people have been on our servers.
"You can see where your kid has been for the past two
weeks. You can find out where someone was at a certain time, or when that
person was at a specific place," Franceschetti explained.
But are these types of apps an invasion of privacy?
"The advantages are huge compared to the disadvantages.
Let's not forget that the person always has to give initial permission - no one
can be tracked unless they allow someone to do it," said Franceschetti.
A similar app called Life360 is credited with helping
families stay connected during last year's tsunami in Japan.
The mother of the missing boy, who preferred to remain
anonymous, said she will continue to use the app to track her son.
"My advice to any parent is not to be shy about keeping
tabs on your children," she said.
"Technology cannot replace pro-active communication and
healthy parent child relationships but I have found that it is one more tool in
a good parent's arsenal."